Orcas, commonly called killer whales, surfaced Tuesday through a small hole in the ice near Inukjuak, in Northern Quebec. / Marina Lacasse, The Canadian Press/AP

by Michael Winter, USA TODAY

by Michael Winter, USA TODAY

A pod of killer whales is trapped in ice in Canada's Hudson Bay and in danger of dying if not freed soon.

Local officials have asked Canadian authorities to send an ice breaker to free the eight to 18 orcas, which are trapped about 12 miles from open water. Campaigns have also been launched on Facebook, Twitter and other social media.

"People have mixed feelings about the situation," Peter Inukpuk, the mayor of Inukjuak, told The Montreal Gazette. "We want to see them free, but we also want them to go away. Killer whales eat seals and belugas. The seal hunt is a huge part of our economy."

The orcas - actually a species of dolphin - were discovered Monday by an Inuit seal hunter about an hour snowmobile ride from Inukjuak. Video shows the distressed marine mammals surfacing or breaching in the pickup-size hole, gasping for air.

One expert said they could suffocate or die from exhaustion without fast action. Temperatures are expected to plummet to about minus 25 degrees Fahrenheit, not including wind chill, and the hole is already shrinking.

"It's too early to start running through options but we're keeping an eye on the situation," spokeswoman Sylvie Racine told the Gazette. "We're definitely concerned, and we're still deciding what we'll do."

Another department spokeswoman told Global Montreal, "Situations where marine mammals are trapped by the ice are not unusual in the North."

Though orcas, commonly called killer whales, are found in all the world's oceans, it's rare to find them deep in Hudson Bay. It's not clear whether they migrated from Canada's West Coast or the Atlantic.

"The ice probably began to close behind the whales as they moved inward," Lyne Morisette, a marine ecologist and researcher at the Université de Québec à Rimouski, told the Gazette. "Now they're stuck. As sad as this situation is, it pales in comparison to the challenges the species faces with the rise of global warming."